CSWC vs. ARCC, MFIC, NMFC, OCSL, PFLT, SLRC, FSK, MAIN, TSLX, and GBDC
Should you be buying Capital Southwest stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Capital Southwest include Ares Capital (ARCC), MidCap Financial Investment (MFIC), New Mountain Finance (NMFC), Oaktree Specialty Lending (OCSL), PennantPark Floating Rate Capital (PFLT), SLR Investment (SLRC), FS KKR Capital (FSK), Main Street Capital (MAIN), Sixth Street Specialty Lending (TSLX), and Golub Capital BDC (GBDC). These companies are all part of the "finance" sector.
Capital Southwest vs. Its Competitors
Capital Southwest (NASDAQ:CSWC) and Ares Capital (NASDAQ:ARCC) are both finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, risk, media sentiment, profitability, dividends, analyst recommendations and valuation.
23.4% of Capital Southwest shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 27.4% of Ares Capital shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.8% of Capital Southwest shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.5% of Ares Capital shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Ares Capital has a net margin of 43.50% compared to Capital Southwest's net margin of 34.51%. Capital Southwest's return on equity of 14.40% beat Ares Capital's return on equity.
Capital Southwest presently has a consensus target price of $23.60, indicating a potential upside of 1.86%. Ares Capital has a consensus target price of $22.00, indicating a potential downside of 3.76%. Given Capital Southwest's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Capital Southwest is more favorable than Ares Capital.
Capital Southwest has a beta of 0.95, suggesting that its stock price is 5% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ares Capital has a beta of 0.67, suggesting that its stock price is 33% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Capital Southwest pays an annual dividend of $2.32 per share and has a dividend yield of 10.0%. Ares Capital pays an annual dividend of $1.92 per share and has a dividend yield of 8.4%. Capital Southwest pays out 156.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Ares Capital pays out 93.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Capital Southwest has increased its dividend for 2 consecutive years. Capital Southwest is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
In the previous week, Ares Capital had 20 more articles in the media than Capital Southwest. MarketBeat recorded 24 mentions for Ares Capital and 4 mentions for Capital Southwest. Ares Capital's average media sentiment score of 1.07 beat Capital Southwest's score of 0.92 indicating that Ares Capital is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Ares Capital has higher revenue and earnings than Capital Southwest. Ares Capital is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Capital Southwest, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Summary
Capital Southwest beats Ares Capital on 10 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.
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New MarketBeat Followers Over Time
This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding CSWC and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
Skip ChartMedia Sentiment Over Time
This chart shows the average media sentiment of NASDAQ and its competitors over the past 90 days as caculated by MarketBeat. The averaged score is equivalent to the following: Very Negative Sentiment <= -1.5, Negative Sentiment > -1.5 and <= -0.5, Neutral Sentiment > -0.5 and < 0.5, Positive Sentiment >= 0.5 and < 1.5, and Very Positive Sentiment >= 1.5.
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Capital Southwest Competitors List
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This page (NASDAQ:CSWC) was last updated on 7/15/2025 by MarketBeat.com Staff